


The Pale Lights of False Hope

by icarus_chained



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Aasimar, Aftermath of Torture, Broken people, Captivity, Crimes & Criminals, Dark Fantasy, Despair, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, F/F, Fantasy, Healing, Hope, Original Fiction, Shadow Sorcerors, Stubborness, Survival, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:33:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29101803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: "There was supposed to be blood on the blade. A few dark drops, for dramatic emphasis. But he’d tried to cutConstance. And that had been his mistake. [...] On her face, his little cut gaped darkly, a black rent in a white cheek. It didn’t bleed. Not a drop. Not a gleam. Constance never did."A bright-dark moment of healing between a shadow sorceress and a fallen aasimar. Two ghost women, survivors of the unsurvivable, and all the wounds and careful healing that entails.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	The Pale Lights of False Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in large part by the shadow sorcerer quirks in 5e, particularly the one where you barely bleed, even when badly injured, despite still being a living person. Because a) that would be awesome as an intimidation tactic, and b) that would be horrifying as a person who doesn't really understand what was done to them.
> 
> Then I added in a fallen aasimar, because why not add in a loss of faith and hope while we're down in the dark anyway? Heh.

“I want you off my turf. If you’re not across the river by sundown, we’ll come back for another word. And you won’t … enjoy that one half as much.”

He made a good picture, Mercy thought. All the swagger of a proper dockside pirate, the dull gleam of an evil little knife in one hand. Tilted just so to catch the light. If only his voice hadn’t quavered just there. If only it hadn’t stumbled just a little bit.

There was supposed to be blood on the blade. A few dark drops, for dramatic emphasis. But he’d tried to cut _Constance_. And that had been his mistake.

She stared him down. As icy as ever, as stiff and cool as any corpse. A hatchet of a woman, with a hatchet of a face. On her face, his little cut gaped darkly, a black rent in a white cheek. It didn’t bleed. Not a drop. Not a gleam. Constance never did. At her sides, the pair of his bully boys he’d set to hold her arms were leaning abruptly away from her. They hadn’t been happy from the start. She was always so cold to the touch. Now, they were rigid and leaning, doing their very best to hold her at arm’s length without crossing that last line into disobedience just yet.

Give them time. A little bit more. Constance was only starting yet.

She was _angry_. Mercy could see it in her, see it in the set of her jaw and the glitter of her black eyes. The rigid cant of her spine. Fury boiled in her gut, visible enough that Mercy could feel the acid in her own in sympathy. Constance didn’t like being surprised. Caught with her pants down. This scene, this feeling, helpless and threatened, clawed at her. A knife at her throat. Some swaggering baboon daring to raise a knife to her. 

But they _had_ been caught on the hop. They’d been caught out. Eight to two, there was no good way out of this. Fury did them sod all good right now.

Though fear might.

“… We will take that under advisement,” Constance said. Slowly and clearly, the ice all but dripping from the words. “Apologies, gentlemen. We had not been made aware of your claim.”

From her mouth, it sounded like the royal ‘we’. Less the fact of two people, more the cold assurance of a queen. Mercy wasn’t offended. Their bully boy was. _Deeply_. But Constance didn’t bleed. She didn’t flinch, didn’t falter, her eyes black and glittering on his. There was something wrong with her. All of them could feel it. This wasn’t some casual dockside mugging. Something was deeply _wrong_ , and he had enough instinct to sense it. Enough instinct to act on it.

He put on a sneer. It was a half-curdled thing, badly painted, but it probably covered the pale lines of his fear enough to save face. _Probably_. He’d given his warning already. Made his little gesture. Constance hadn’t refuted it outright. Now was a good time to back off, gather his men and his courage a little bit, and come back at this problem later. 

Come back and hope that either it had vanished in the meantime, or had at least become somewhat more explicable.

“ _Sundown_ ,” he said again, and took his life in his hands to tap the blade patronisingly against Constance’s cheek. The _other_ cheek. From the way his eyes flickered, he’d shied from the first one. From the empty wound there. The black line in white flesh. “Docker’s Yard isn’t healthy at night, my lovelies. Best remember.”

“Oh, we will,” Mercy said lightly. Amiably. Drawing his attention briefly over to her. Smiling for him. Just to drive the alarm that little deeper. “Don’t worry, gents. We won’t forget.”

Constance moved. Tilted her head just so, so the blade _rasped_ , gently, over her cheek. Her lip curled. Hers was _not_ a smile. No one with a brain could mistake it for one. His fingers fumbled around the knife. Yanked it back. Raised another black line across her cheek. This one didn’t bleed either. No more than the first. 

They took the hint. Proving that they did, in fact, have brains. Their pirate bared his teeth, snarled at them, his knife in hand, but he backed off. The bully boys let go with alacrity. Within a few minutes, she and Constance had the alley once more to themselves. 

Mercy waited a few minutes more. Staying loose, staying ready. Listening to the city until the hush of a hunting thing died down again. Until they were, she was sure, actually alone again.

Then she moved to her partner’s side. Moved to Constance, carefully, while the woman stood there trembling gently to herself. Eyes squeezed shut. Breaths sharp and shallow in her chest. 

Not fear. Never that. Fury, rather. Blind hate. Constance shuddered with it.

You had to be careful, touching her when she was like that. Had to go easy. Go gentle. Step her carefully back against her rage. Mercy touched her elbow first. Just lightly. Nothing like the grabbing of hard hands on her arms. Pinning her, holding her. Leaving her open to the blade. Nothing like that. Just a gentle touch, a guide and a reminder of the waking world. 

Black eyes flared open. Mercy smiled tiredly down at her. Eased her gently back against the wall. Out of sight. Away from prying eyes from down the alley.

“Deep breaths,” she advised softly. “We’re not in a state to kill them just now. Breathe for me, Connie. Breathe.”

Constance sucked in a breath. Sucked in a _snarl_.

“I think … I think I’d manage to kill quite a few of them,” she said. Whispered. Thin and vehement. “I might not be what I was. I might not be able to say a word and have them _wiped_ from the face of my city. But I promise you I could still kill them. The old-fashioned way, or with all the _lovely new gifts_ I’ve been given. I’ll kill them. I promise you.”

Mercy hummed agreeably. Genuine agreement, even. She’d seen Constance fight. And she’d seen Constance before, too. Not that Constance _knew_ that, but she had. Back when Constance had been … the dockside pirate, surrounded by her bully boys. Not quite. A bit more upmarket than the docks. The queen of the undercity, once upon a time. Constance Merrick. The lady of the lower wards. Half the city in the palm of her hand. But not anymore. Not anymore.

She barked a laugh. Constance. At the agreement. At the condescension. She closed her eyes again and leaned back into the sooty brick of the alley wall.

The cuts on her cheeks gaped a bit. At the motion. They spread, black and bloodless. Unnatural. Mercy blinked at them. She wasn’t … They weren’t off-putting to her. Not the way they’d been to the pirate, to his men. She wasn’t _alarmed_ by them. Whatever force had touched Constance, had ravaged her and savaged her and left her a half-dead thing in its wake, it was nothing that stirred any fear in Mercy’s breast. She was too tired for that. Had been for years. This feeling at the sight of the wounds, it wasn’t _fear_.

But it was something. Something she wasn’t entirely sure on herself. An old notion, from such a long and hazy time ago.

She found herself reaching up. Cupping a palm around a wounded cheek. While black eyes flared open in alarm beneath her. Constance went still. Shot stiff, full of a trembling readiness. A coiled, acidic, hateful thing. Mercy smiled helplessly. A strange curl of her lips. She tilted her head, and brushed her thumb across the tear in her companion’s flesh.

“May I?” she asked. Oddly distant from herself. From anything that had meaning anymore.

Constance stared at her. “May you _what_?”

Ah. Yes. It had been so long, hadn’t it. Never in Constance’s company. She wasn’t that person anymore, no more than Constance was a queen. Of course the woman didn’t know what she was talking about. It could be anything. Kill or kiss or gouge her thumb into the wound. Stare at it. Tilt her head into the light for morbid curiosity’s sake. Anything.

Probably not this. Constance had no experience of anything like this. Mercy would know. She recognised the type. Her own kin. Her own self.

“… This,” she whispered, with an echo of the old reverence. “This.”

Her thumb brushed the wound once more. Covered it over. Somewhere inside her, so deep it should have been lost years ago, a thin, pale light stuttered back to life. An ancient glow. A child’s fantasy.

The wound closed over. That black tear in pale flesh. A second hum of light, and the other one followed it.

They were small, after all. It was easily done. They were only tiny wounds.

Constance _stared_ at her. She’d never seen the woman go so still. Never seen the tremors that seized her run so mild. Constance was a creature of rage and violence. Even stricken, even half unmade, she still clawed and crawled and surged her way upwards. The thing that had blighted her had found a knife in its eye for the trouble. Mercy believed that, with every shaking fibre of her battered heart. Constance was not made for surrender. She’d never seen the woman go so still.

“… I didn’t know you could do that,” she said finally. A strange note in her voice, scraped and thin. “I thought things like you couldn’t heal.”

Things like you. Yes. It wasn’t even cruel. Mercy laughed softly. Things like her. Things like Constance. Birds of a feather. Half-unmade things. It was a fair question. A fair _accusation_.

She dipped her head. Cupped both the woman’s cheeks in her hands.

“… It’s an old thing,” she agreed, closing her own eyes for a change. Murmuring into the bright darkness between them. “From … before. They didn’t take it. But I haven’t … tried before today. It pulls at things. Opens things. Never saw a cause until today.”

The light was a terrible thing. She remembered it. Remembered the feel of it. It was terrifying, in its way. Her chest felt stretched. _Torn_. Not pain, as such, but a dreadful opening. Like a gap between her ribs. A gaping hole, a path right to her …

Her heart was pounding, she realised faintly. A surge of humour. Her heart was sore.

She had thought they’d beaten this from her. Cut and burned and starved it. Worn it out. They’d done their damnedest. Squeezed her shredded heart in their hands, wrung out the last drop of light. Things like her couldn’t heal. Why would they want to?

But something in the sight of black wounds that wouldn’t bleed and wouldn’t heal had called to her.

She was sorry, in a way. Constance had trusted her more for the lack. Two half-dead things, though Constance more literally, more _physically_ than most. She’d been able to trust in Mercy’s own emptiness. Own echoes, own experience. Mercy hadn’t told her, not the full of it, but Constance was close enough to see. A kindred vision. Something had torn them both. Rent them, shredded them, left them unmade. It had been obvious. They’d been ghosts, the pair of them. Two women too tired to bleed. Touched by deathly things.

If she hadn’t been, Constance would never have hired her. The woman was too tired now to have patience for hopeful things. Too hateful. Too damned.

“… Today?” the woman asked. Soft as a viper. “Why today, Mercy? Have you been so long among dead things that you’ll try to heal any old corpse that falls into your hands?”

Mercy laughed breathlessly. A well of amusement and sorrow and acknowledgement and pity. Her answer. Her only answer. Her chest ached. Her back itched. Not the scars, though they often pulled. The phantoms of her wings, instead. The skeletal arch of them, hidden from view. They’d been fire, once. They’d been light and glory. But she had spent so long among dead things.

The charnel pits beneath Castle Deep. The sewers full of bodies and bones that a strange halfling named Joachim had dug her out of. He’d seen them. Her wings. Even though she hadn’t spread them. He saw all the ghostly things. 

He’d dug her out because of them. Half-dead, unmade. He’d birthed her there, all over again, from the slurry of the grave. Raised her, taught her. A woman made new again.

A woman of the grave. A walker in death. A half-dead thing, even still, with phantom wings. Nothing that could heal anyone. Nothing that would _want_ to.

Until Constance. Until a half-dead woman, a vicious animal facing her end, clawing futilely at its face. A woman taken and swallowed by some black thing, death and not-death, chewed and swallowed and _changed_. Into a woman who couldn’t bleed. A woman with no warmth, no light, no hope. Only fury, and magic, and shadows, and the cold determination to find her killer, sink her claws into it, and drag it with her as she went. 

Some thing, some creature born of shadows, had tried to kill her. Or eat her. And Constance was a hatchet woman with a hatchet face, and her only answer to that was _hatred_. Ice and fury. 

She thought herself already a corpse. She had no fear, because she thought herself already dead.

Or she _wanted_ to.

If she opened her eyes now, Mercy knew what she would see. Every tear in her own chest, every terror that ancient light brought her. If she looked, she’d see it echoed back at her. From a woman’s black eyes. A _friend’s_ black eyes. A woman too tired to bleed. Too damned for hope.

She opened them anyway. Lifted them, stared straight down the barrel of Constance’s shaking hatred. She wanted to … explain. To show she understood. Even now, even still. Kindred, to the last. She wanted to show she understood.

“… Her name was Jeroviel,” she said softly. A bright, exhausted whisper. Constance frowned at her, black and glittering. The light bubbled in Mercy’s chest. Ancient and worn. “My … My angel. Before. Her name was Jeroviel. When they took me. When they sold me. She was with me. As much as things like her can be with things like me. She … tried to help. In hindsight, she was trying to help. I … I didn’t understand. It hurt too much. I didn’t understand her.”

Constance blinked at her. She didn’t speak, didn’t answer. Braced back against the wall. Shielded from prying eyes by Mercy’s height. Hatred bubbled in her gut. Fear, more than any knife could bring her, coiled in her eyes. She stared it down. Like always. 

Mercy’s chest gaped, open and aching. She brushed her thumbs across icy cheeks.

“She sent me dreams,” she tried to explain. Fumbling her way towards damnation or grace. “I think it was all she could do. When they let me rest. When they stopped flaying me long enough to let me rest. She would send me … visions. Of warmth. Of light. Of bright places, _safe_ places. She was trying to help. I _know_ … I know she was trying to help. Now. But then …”

She had to fight for this. Had to struggle for it. The words. She’d never told anyone this part. Not even Joachim. She’d told him so many things. Bubbling with rage and hatred, luminous with the black touch of death. He’d seen all her scars. Pulled her up out of the bones, pieced what bits of her remained back together. He’d spent decades in the charnel pits under Castle Deep. There was nothing they’d done to her that he couldn’t guess. Hadn’t seen. Except this. This part. She’d never told him. She’d never told _anyone_.

Because it hadn’t been the torturers that had done it to her. It hadn’t been those men and women, with their hard hands and burning whips. It had been an angel, instead. An agony not of cruelty, but of good. Maybe Joachim would have understood that. Maybe. But Constance definitely would.

“… I hated her,” she admitted. Her worst secret. A confession from the blackest depths of her soul. What remained of it. “By the end. I hated her so much. She sent me visions. She sent me _taunts_. Empty promises. Visions of respite that never came. In the moments when I didn’t think she was taunting me on purpose, showing me what she had and I never would, I thought … I thought her hideously, _disgustingly_ naïve. Safe in her celestial realm, with no concept of the … the agonies of lesser beings. I hated her. I hated her so much by the end. When I clawed my way out, by my own hands. I hated her enough … Enough to drown her out. Block out her voice. Crush it down. So I’d never have to hear it again. Never have to … suffer a false hope. At an angel’s hands.”

Because she knew. She _knew_. How much worse a hope could be. How cruel a kindness. When you had to be dead. _Wanted_ to be dead. In death there was safety. Freedom. No fear, no pain. The world was coming for you. It was so much safer not to be able to bleed.

But wounds that didn’t bleed didn’t heal. They just stayed. Black and staring. And ate you up.

And Constance knew her. Kinship. They’d been kin from the start. Constance knew what she was trying to say. Leaned into her hands. The brush of her thumbs. The way she’d leaned in to the knife.

“And what’s this, then?” she asked, soft and icy and hateful. Shaking with old rage. Oddly gentle. “Your pain to someone else? A false hope shared, in all its futility? Is that what you wanted today?”

Mercy laughed. A cracked sound. Her chest broke open. She could feel cold tears on her cheeks, and the ghosts of wings at her back. “Probably,” she said. “Probably. I don’t have the light for anything else. Like you said. Things like me don’t heal. Not for real. A half-dead light, that’s all you get, and the faint memory of brighter things. As you say. A false hope.”

Enough to try, but not succeed. She was better now at ghostly things. At death. She was nothing an angel would touch with a thousand-foot pole, now. Nothing that could heal. Nothing that mattered.

Not even if she wanted to.

“… Would you kill her?” Constance asked softly. Gently, truly gently. Reaching up her hands now to cup Mercy’s cheeks. Looking at her with black, glittering eyes. “Your angel. Jeroviel. Would you kill her, do you think? As you are now, if you met her tomorrow?”

Would you kill the woman who offered you agony. In an effort to be kind.

Mercy had an answer. Instantly, instinctively, the moment the question was asked. Not one Constance would want to hear. One she might take as a lie, or a cheat. But a true answer, all the same. She didn’t know if it was selfish, or just exhausted. The product of an ancient light, or a splintered chest. But she had it, so she said it.

“No,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t kill her. I might let her kill me. No one else. I don’t trust her to know enough of things down here to judge anyone else. But I might let her kill me.”

Constance lifted her lip. A hard curl. Not a smile.

“I wouldn’t,” she said. Her hands cold and careful on Mercy’s cheek. “I won’t. If we meet her tomorrow. I won’t let her kill a damned thing.”

Mercy blinked rapidly. Smiled, a helpless dart across her lips. She believed her. A vicious animal, Constance. All the way to the end. Whatever forces came against her, dark or light, deathly or shining, would find her knife in their eye. Even as they killed her. She wasn’t made for surrender. She was a bright-dark, acidic thing, icy and shaking with rage. She was half-dead already. An angry ghost. She wouldn’t let anything kill them unscathed. 

The old light bubbled up. False hope, pale reverence. She bowed her head and rested her brow _slowly_ , carefully, against an icy one. Let her eyes drift closed.

“Can I heal you?” she asked tiredly. To the blackness behind her eyes. “If it happens again. If it’s small enough. Can I heal you?”

Constance shifted uneasily. A caged, shaking animal in her hands. But she didn’t back down for long.

“I don’t bleed,” she reminded coldly. “How much use is it, when I’m half-dead, and I don’t bleed?”

How much use is it. How much use is anything. But they were only _half_ -dead, still. Ghost women, walkers in the grave, but _walkers_ , even still. The thing that had eaten Constance hadn’t eaten her all the way. There’d been enough of Mercy left, even in the charnel pits, for Joachim to piece together. They were not full-dead yet. Constance had a monster still to kill. And Mercy had …

A hope to find. A real one. Somewhere.

She opened her eyes. Lifted her head. Enough to kiss, softly, the place her brow had rested. An icy paleness, over black, glittering eyes. At Constance’s flinch, her startled retreat, she lowered more. Softened more. Pressed another kiss to a cheek. A third, to the second one. Whole, now. Healed, at least enough. Perhaps … faintly luminous, even still.

“No use,” she said readily. Light and easy. “No use at all. But a favour, Connie. A gift of false hope. I’d like to heal you if I can. Please.”

Constance stared at her for a long second. Shaking with her distant rage. But she smiled, then. A proper smile. Thin and doubtful.

“Is better from me than from an angel?” she asked. Not for an answer. “But all right. What’s mine is yours, dear heart. I promised a share in all rewards we reap on this quest. False hope is the least of it. You’ve figured that out, by now.”

Mercy grinned. Nodded. “From the start,” she agreed. “I know a grave-walker when I see one. It was never a surprise, Connie. Never fear.”

Constance grinned darkly. A hunter’s delighted set of teeth. Two animals hunting together.

“Well then,” she said. “I suppose we should get back to it, then. We have a river to clear by sundown. Or a nice killing yard to find, the better to ambush silly young men in. Whichever we might stumble across soonest.”

She was such a vicious animal, Constance. She had been from the start. Mercy sighed tiredly.

“Let’s try for the river,” she said. “I’m not in the mood for silly young men. I wasn’t in the mood before they ever popped up, to be honest. Let them learn their lessons in their own time. I’m too tired and annoyed right now to be the one to teach them.”

Maybe they wouldn’t learn. Maybe they never would. Maybe death’s phantom wing would never do more than brush them idly in passing, a spectre of mortality only sensed and never felt. Maybe they’d be lucky, their pirate and his bully boy pals.

But Mercy doubted it, somehow. There were few enough spared in the end, and rarely those who so blithely tempted fate.

No man foolish enough to raise a knife to _Constance_ could be long outrunning his fate.

Let it come for him, then. At its own time, at its own pace. She was tired, and cracked open, and peeled apart by a hazy, ancient light. She wasn’t in the mood. Let someone else kill him. She had no doubt there were more than enough candidates. 

For now, no death. False hope, instead. No bleeding.

Constance studied her for a moment. A dark, glittering stare. But she agreed, momentarily. Acquiesced. She stepped away from the wall, stepped back into the open stare of the alley, and caught Mercy’s hand as she went. Tangled it, gently, and brought it in cold fingers to icy lips. An ache swept through her at the brush of the kiss. Her battered heart burned in her chest.

“As you wish, dear heart,” Constance murmured softly. More beautiful and terrible than any angel’s dream of safety. “As you wish.”

Ah well, Mercy thought. There was safety in death. Joachim had assured her. In the end, when all else failed, there would be safety in death.

And between them, herself and Constance, they were most of the way there already.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is finding Mercy's backstory a bit reminiscent of the Count of Monte Cristo, down to 'Castle Deep' vs 'Chateau d'If' ... you are entirely correct, and that is exactly what I was borrowing from. With Joachim the Halfling as a sort of post-facto Abbe Faria. Also, if you're curious, Mercy is a Phantom Rogue, and Joachim was the one to show her the ropes. If you're reborn in essentially a mass-grave-slash-sewer-system, you might as well learn to talk to the dead.


End file.
